After some of the guys missed our alarm, we had to eat breakfast real quick before heading back to Mary’s house to get to work. 

Back at Mary’s, we set out to complete the task we had started yesterday: the historical renovation of a 101 year old three room shotgun house to be rented out to Mississippi residents still displaced by the Hurricane. Yesterday’s work mainly consisted of the ten of us, scraping old paint of the three room shotgun house at 1910 Bullis Ave for six and a half hours.

Today, when we got there, amidst intermittent rain showers, we began the task of sanding down the stripped wood so that we could prime it for painting later in the week. Our hands became gritty with woodchips, paintchips, essentially any kinda house-chips you could imagine, as we sanded down the two side walls and the front of the house.

Paint chips were soon replace with paint as we started applying primer to the walls. These facades that were once a cracked yellow and then a stripped wood became a glistening white as we primed them for painting later in the week. As we brushed the primer across the wood, standing on ladders to reach the highest parts, we spoke of philosophy, dignity, death and all those interesting topics.

Kristen, one of my tripmates, made an interesting point as we were brushing on the primer. By renovating this small, old house, we are giving historical value to the people who built it and lived in it all these years. Usually when we think of history, we view it through the lens of those in power. When we think of historical buildings, we think of monuments, mansions, homes and workspaces of powerful or important people. By treating this old house as history, we were creating history on the terms of regular people. This was a three room shotgun house, not a mansion, and our work, scraping, sanding, priming, was affirming the value and historical importance of normal people and their experiences. 

These people, people like Mary, people like many of our family members, live the experiences of history. 

Later, when rain came back and we couldn’t prime anymore, we drove over to the East Biloxi Boys and Girls Club and helped the kids there finish their math and english homework for about 30 minutes. After that we went outside to spend time with the five and six year olds: playing tag, hide and seek, kickball, doing some more homework, making friends. 

These kids were only babies and toddlers when Katrina hit. They are the children of the recovery movement. Their lives and experiences, their moments playing with volunteers on the playground, learning academic skills, making friends and growing up, this is the history of the recovery movement, this game of kickball out behind a Boys and Girls Club one rainy afternoon. These children will tell this important story, of people coming together to serve. Maybe they’ll remember the countless volunteers that came through to work with them, maybe they won’t. 

These children grew in a storm. They are Biloxi’s answer to the challenges that this City has faced. They are the builders of a new history.

Read more blog posts from this trip and others at http://harvardservicebreak.wordpress.com/

Tags: ASB, community service, Programs, student development
Posted in Programs